Wednesday, July 3, 2013

All About Annie- 20 months

Anniston is doing so many new things and growing up so fast that I thought it would be fun to do a post all about her at 20 months. Kind of like the monthly updates I used to do. These are just little things that I've thought of that I want to document so here goes some major randomness along with some photos I've thrown in the mix.

-- Annie has started saying "morning" when I go get her from her crib every morning when she wakes. Half the time I don't even say it first. It is the sweetest sound in the world.

-- She LOVES Dora the Explorer right now. She has this huge purple backpack (that's more like a suitcase) that she drags around everywhere saying "Ba-pa" for "backpack." She gets this from Dora when they sing the backpack song. I took her to Target a couple of weeks ago to see if they had any backpacks that were more her size. Lucky us, they had a Dora backpack. She has carried that thing around with her everywhere, filling it with books, toys, you name it. We went to eat at Chick-fil-A after our Target trip and she insisted that her backpack be right beside her while she ate.

She also loves to put her backpack on when Dora does:

-- One of our favorite games to play is "tickle Daddy." We wiggle our fingers and creep up to Daddy saying "We're going to get you!" and then we tickle him to death. Of course, he fake laughs and goes along with it, which Anniston thinks is the funniest thing.

-- Anniston can recognize and say about 80% of her letters, including W, F, P, K, B, R. "R" is her favorite. I think she likes to say it. She will even go up to words that she sees written out and identify the ones she knows. We work on them a lot, especially at bath time because she has those foam letters that stick to the tile.

-- We are trying to work on colors too. She's not so good at those yet. It's really funny, because every week everything will be a different color. For the longest time, everything was purple. Now everything is green. Sometimes she doesn't want to work on her colors and will shake her head vigorously and say "no, no, no." I think she gets frustrated because she doesn't know them and she doesn't like that. Unfortunately, she is going to be exactly like me in that aspect. I always hated not knowing or learning things quickly in school.

-- Anniston said "I love you" for the first time a couple of weeks ago. A little hard to understand, but I know what she's saying. She will say it and then throw her arms around me neck.

-- Every night before bed, Annie and I go upstairs to her room and rock before bed. I sometimes read her a story, sing to her, or just talk about the day. When she starts to get sleepy, she will sling one arm up around me neck and want us to just cuddle cheek to cheek. Literally. If I try to pull back a bit (sometimes I think she will suffocate!) she only tightens her hold on me even more. I sit there and just think about how lucky I am and how I want to remember this forever.

-- She has really started to reach her terrible two "tantrums" in some ways. When she gets mad or frustrated about something, she will fake cry and scrunch her nose up. Girl can really scrunch that nose up, too. I took a picture just to prove it:

-- She also loves, loves, loves the "animal" song right now. Old McDonald is what normal people call it. She loves for us to choose the animal and then she will say what sound it makes. Over and over and over we sing this song to her. If I try to sing a different one, she will just interrupt me chanting "animals, animals." Whew, I am ready for that phase to be over with:)

-- Miss Annie is SO girly. She loves to sit at her little princess vanity and brush her hair, she loves to wear bracelets and necklaces, and she loves shoes! One day, I was filing my nails and she was just itching to have my nail file. I finally went and got another one for her and she came and sat down right beside me and started filing her nails, too. Well, sort of. She was trying, anyway.

I love my baby girl so much and the times just keep getting better as she gets older.